Fans of dystopian science fiction tales will want to sit up and take note of a new game on iOS. Blackbar is an intricate and engrossing word game where you must decipher the letters sent to you by an old friend after they have been censored by the devious Department of Communication. If that sounds uninteresting, rest assured that it's actually quite a challenge.

The story unfolds as you receive your first letter from Kenty after she's taken a job in the city. Kenty is training to be an agent in the Department of Communication, a necessary component of any authoritarian state that exists to censor the communication of the people. In most of the letters you get from Kenty, there are one or more words redacted. You must fill in the blanks to get the whole story and continue to the next page. It's like madlibs, but you can only fill in the blanks with the kind of troubling talk that the Department is trying to weed out.

Each blank has a certain number of spaces. Using that, along with the context clues, you should be able to figure out what Kenty is saying. Not long after the letters start arriving, you begin receiving a completely different kind of communique--Kenty is in trouble, but she doesn't know it yet. The shadowy group sending you messages seems to have found a way around the censors. Will you be able to help your friend? You'll have to be clever to solve all the puzzles and find out.

Blackbar is not your standard iOS game. In fact, as Blackbar points out, a game is something you play, and a problem is something you solve. There are no fancy graphics and no cinematic music. There isn't even a menu or instructions. It's just you and the cryptic pages of text, describing a depressing world and a harrowing tale. It's also very well-written.

Blackbar is $2.99, but this isn't novel-length. You can probably beat the game in an afternoon, but it will be an awesome afternoon.

About the Author

Ryan Whitwam is a freelance tech/science writer and fan of all things electronic. This long-time skeptic and former research scientist is a lover of the em dash and a defender of the Oxford comma. He also writes for Geek.com and ExtremeTech.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RyanWhitwam
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